After hours

An afternoon with an old friend has its perks especially when you both have been around long enough to get a pleasant whiff of déjà-vu at the sight of harem pantsuits and fringed scarves. Add to that the credit crunch and you inevitably lapse into a kind of nostalgia. My friend and I, you see, met for the first time in October 1987 after French class, on the day now known as Black Monday because of the spectacular amounts which were lost on all the major stock markets. This meant, in turn, that power dressing’s time was up; grunge, its ugly sister, was a better fit for the slump that followed.

“Do you think kids keep a diary nowadays?” asked my friend on the afternoon in question while we mingled with shoppers sifting through the fashion glut. Each time we meet we dissect the overlap we share, comparing the highs and lows of the then with the now. We both used to commit pen to paper on a daily basis. In my case, a diary seemed like a great thing from which I could plunder ideas several years down the line for the benefit of my readers. The diary question came up while we were brooding over the deterioration of written English and Maltese and the phenomenon of the bogus unknown father.

Yet we figured out how to temper the gloom. For starters, my friend went back to school a couple of years ago to become an interpreter. It was a demanding course but rushing to university directly after work for a good portion of the week was well worth the effort to achieve a dream that had long been on her to-do list. The course was also one of several opportunities which have become available to people who wish to better themselves and, in some instances, also make a career move or improve prospects on the job.

While, ironically, text messaging, chatting and lower phone call rates have, in all probability, contributed to the decline in writing skills and the ability to communicate properly, there are people out there who know that learning is a lifelong process. Locally, the past 20 years have seen a steady upswing in opportunities for people who are interested in specialisation or learning at a higher level.

True, I was horrified, the other month, to read a description of a dress on a British online shop because of the way the seller spelt the word gorgeous. It was “gorguss”, if you were wondering. Yet it is also true that, in the course of researching this feature, I got to know more about the juggling acts of undergraduates and post-graduates who are not full-time students. It was uplifting to learn how they manage time in a way that creates a balance between family, work and study.

I had the opportunity to speak to Dominic Garcia, 38, while I was on the introduction of Freakononomics by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner. Given that one of Mr Garcia’s key areas of interest is the media and how it refracts information, I could understand his concern about the potential that power has to skew information to its advantage. While we discussed statistics, the financial meltdown and the fact that disasters are a source of revenue for some, I was reminded of an excerpt from the book: “If morality represents how we would like the world to work, then economics represents how it actually does work.”

Mr Garcia enrolled in a masters programme a few years ago. The 9/11 attacks and the revelations about the weapons of mass destruction dossier which was circulated in the aftermath, got him seriously thinking about appearance and reality. A story can go awry once it is filtered by movers and shakers who, at times, are ready to go to great lengths to distort information to their advantage. This encouraged Mr Garcia to widen his focus on the pitfalls of rhetoric and propaganda.

As is true of any post-graduate undertaking, Mr Garcia had to read a lot to sift through the stands adopted by academics on his chosen subject. As a teacher of philosophy, with a special emphasis on language and logic, Mr Garcia appreciates the fact that he can share his newfound knowledge with both his family and his students. Now that he has handed in his work, he feels that the whole experience of undertaking research to write an academic paper has served to broaden his vista considerably. He emphasised, in fact, that he does not expect his students to agree with every word he says. “I want to give my pupils the room to think out things for themselves,” he was quick to point out to me.

He recalls spending many a night awake and many an early morning reading the works of Baudrillard, Marcuse and Habermas, to name but a few. As the father of two children between the ages of three and six, his years of study have called for a joint effort because he would not, he underlines, have been able to complete his paper without the support of his wife.

The masters programme in education which teachers Nadya Caruana, 31, and Roberta Camilleri, 40, have enrolled for this year is specifically about responding to student diversity. In a world which is driven by varying degrees of misinformation, a course like this can doubly serve to open minds and help students steer through bias which is, after all, the point of learning, particularly at a tertiary level.

Theirs is a part-time course. This means that lectures are normally in the evening. The taught components take two years to be covered in class after which there is a year left for the dissertation. Mrs Caruana is married with two children; one is three and the other is almost one and a half. She is, by profession, a teacher, currently on parental leave.

Naturally it is hectic at home. While the day is still 24 hours long, as Mrs Caruana points out good-naturedly, time management is not that overwhelming a task once you are able to decide what your priorities are and have the backing of a husband who genuinely believes in the division of labour on household ground. She also has the support of her in-laws and parents who are more than willing to babysit when her husband is at work and she has to go to university. On her part, she is keen on sticking to her decision that her academic books and course-related material are off-limits on Sundays. Learning gives her an extra boost. When a parent takes an interest in higher knowledge, it is always a plus. Handled with care, a parent’s phase of study can benefit the whole family.

Mrs Camilleri treasures weekends as well, particularly her family’s Sunday ritual, as a time of rest. Weather permitting, the family enjoys going out on a picnic after Mass. Yet during weekdays she and her husband also see to it that they spend a good deal of quality time with their three children. There is always a parent or, occasionally, a grandparent at hand while the children are busy with their homework, having dinner or simply taking time out.

Without the support of her husband, Mrs Camilleri notes, opting to study would not have been possible. She has always been able to rely on him as a source of encouragement and practical help. This does not mean, however, that the decision to return to school was an easy one. Having already graduated twice while raising a family at the same time, Mrs Camilleri was aware that a course is time-consuming and requires a lot of commitment, whether full-time or part-time. A while back, in fact, she read for a BA (Youth and Community Studies) during which her second child was born. She subsequently attained full teaching professional status by means of the PGCE course.

If you are raising a family, a full-time course is tough. In class you are a student, just like the rest in spite of the fact that you have three children, between the ages of seven and 13, waiting for you at home. Of course, parents who are also mature students do not expect special treatment. The problem is, perhaps, that the country in general requires some fine-tuning to improve child-minding services and to warm up to the idea of online courses. In the meantime, the only thing that will make Mrs Camilleri call it quits is if the situation becomes a tad too hard for her family to cope with.

The youngest mature student I got to know was BSc student and IT assistant Joseph Abela. The people in his class at university are roughly his age. In an area like IT it makes sense to get hands-on experience, directly reinforcing what is covered in class and applying it to real situations where speed and ingenuity are essential given our dependency on IT systems. At 23, he is working full-time and he has also started a part-time course which is directly related to his work in IT. The reason for splitting his days between study and work is that he wants to gain practical, on-the-job experience. He has no difficulty coping with work and study. In his opinion, the most important thing a student has to do is to take the trouble to find time to study and make the best of that time by putting in a wholehearted effort.

Mrs Camilleri had this to say about learning: “You can never be done from learning – the more you find out, the more there is to find out. And the self-fulfilment that you get? Well, it is out of this world.” It reminded me how my friend, the interpreter, dealt with the rigorous schedule of her course. The high you get from learning something new, particularly if it is something you have always wanted to learn about, gives you that extra boost to wake up early and sleep late to get on with your course work. Sure you will feel dead tired now and then, overwhelmed perhaps. But it will pass and when it does you can pinch yourself awake, brew some coffee and, as usual, do your very best, for yourself and others.

Source: Weekender, December 6, 2008